Chase by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page B

nothing. He disliked the tone of smug complacency, of unquestioned self-assurance that Cauvel adopted for moments like this. Right now all he wanted was out of there, to get home and close the door and open the bottle. A new bottle.
    Cauvel said, ‘You couldn't accept the fact that you wanted to taste the good things of life again, and you invented Judge because he represented the remaining possibility of punishment. You had to make some excuses for being forced into life again, and Judge worked well in this respect too. You would, sooner or later, have to take the initiative to stop him. You could pretend that you still wanted seclusion in which to mourn but were no longer being permitted that indulgence.’
    ‘All wrong,’ Chase said, ‘Judge is real.’
    ‘I think not.’ Cauvel smiled at the amber greyhound and said, ‘If you thought he was real, why not go to the police rather than your psychiatrist?’
    Chase had no answer. He said, ‘You're twisting things.’
    ‘No. Just showing you the straight truth.’ He stood up, stretched, his too-long trousers rising on his unpolished shoes, falling when he finished his yawn. ‘I recommend you go home and forget Judge. You don't need an excuse to live like a normal human being. You have suffered enough, Ben, more than enough. For the lives you took, you saved others. Remember that.’
    Chase stood, bewildered, no longer perfectly sure that he did know what was real and what was not. Cauvel put his arm around his shoulder and walked him to the door.
    ‘Friday at three,’ the doctor said. ‘Let's see how far out of your hole you've come by then. I think you're going to make it, Ben. Don't despair.’
    Miss Pringle escorted him to the outer door of the waiting room and closed it after him, leaving him alone in the hallway.
    ‘Judge is real,’ Chase said to no one at all. ‘Isn't he?’
     

Four
     
     
    Chase was sitting on the edge of his bed by the nightstand where the telephone stood, sipping at his second glass of Jack Daniel's, when six o'clock rolled around. He put the drink down and wiped his sweaty hands on his slacks, cleared his throat so that his voice would not catch when he tried to speak.
    At 6:05 he began to feel uneasy. He thought of going downstairs to ask Mrs Fiedling what time her clocks read, in the event that his own was not functioning properly. He refrained from that only because he was afraid of missing the call if it should come while he was down there.
    At 6:15 he picked up his drink again and sipped at it steadily, watching the phone as if it might try to move. His hands were damp again; beads of perspiration had appeared on his forehead.
    At 6:30 he went to the cupboard, took down his whisky bottle of the day - which had barely been touched - and poured his third glass. He did not put it away again, but left it out on the waist-high cupboard counter where he could easily reach it. He read the label, which he had studied a hundred times before, then carried his drink back to the bed.
    By seven o'clock he was feeling all the liquor in him. Everything had become softened, his movements lethargic. He settled back against the headboard and finally faced the truth: Cauvel had been correct. There was no Judge. Judge had been an illusion, a psychological mechanism for rationalization of his slowly lessening guilt complex. He tried to think about that, to study the meaning of it, but he could not be sure if this was a good or a bad development.
    In the bathroom, he drew a tub of warm water and tested it with his hand until it was just right. He folded a damp washcloth over the wide porcelain rim of the tub and placed his drink on that, stripped, stepped into the tub and settled down until, seated, the water came partway up his chest. It was very nice, comforting. The whisky and the water and the steam rising around him had all conspired to make him feel as if he were floating, falling up into a stream of soft clouds. He leaned back until his head